What inspired you to write this book?
My inspiration for this book is a little funny. I wanted to write a supernatural book about my husband and his job. My husband is a retail manager and our Rottweiler goes with him to work. The stories he comes home and tells me are hilarious and ridiculous and sometimes you think he’s making it up even though I know for a fact he’s not. So I wanted to have a very self-deprecating, version of my husband, a store owner that I could throw into a paranormal world and see what happened. Jas bond definitely moved away from that initial caricature of my husband once I was really writing the first book but my husband was definitely the inspiration for this story. When I read it to him he tells me that the Rottweiler Bailey is a much better representation of our Rottweiler then Jas is of him.
What can we expect from you in the future?
All the things! I’m just kidding, I do an author podcast titled Exceptionally Average Authors Explain it All, with an author friend of mine Stevie Ray Causey. In that podcast we talk about how I jump from project to project really easily and struggle with setting goals and sticking to them. But you’ll definitely see the second season of our podcast, we’re currently at the midseason break. I am also releasing the first four books of the Jas Bond series between now and the end of July. Right now I’m thinking there are eight books in the series total and I’m hoping to have all of those out by the end of the year. I am also hoping to have some other books out this year but I’m not sure what other titles there will be or what genre, it will all depend on what I can fit around Jas Bond’s schedule.
Do you have any “side stories” about the characters?
I do not have any publishable side stories about the characters right now. That could change later, but as of right now I don’t. I do however know things like how Jas started working with Sven, I have that whole scene played out in my head. Or why Jas broke up with his fiancée and the story behind that. But I don’t think any of those side stories will end up getting published, they might be in some small capacity in one of the main series, but as of right now no publishable side stories.
Can you tell us a little bit about the characters in this book?
Sure, there are a cast of characters in the Jas Bond world. There’s Jas who is a magic-less son of a witch who owns a magical antiques store. His mother owned it before him and his grandmother before her and they are both witches so running the store was a lot easier for them than it is him. He has a rambunctious young Rottweiler named Bailey who is very opinionated and what she wants and when she wants it. He has a best friend Blake who is a werewolf, paranormal police detective who Bailey likes more than Jas. There is also Sven who is a dwarf that works at the antique shop he works in the back fixing objects that come into the shop that are broken. Though his name is Sven he is actually Scottish and very old but we don’t know his exact age. There is also Violetta who is Jas’s ex-fiancé. She is a very powerful witch and a very free spirit, she travels a lot she’s very no-nonsense she and Jas are on very good terms and are still friends even though sometimes they bicker a little bit and there’s a little bit of stress between them from time to time.
What did you enjoy most about writing this book?
I enjoy writing Snark so anytime someone was snarky I enjoyed it. I enjoy writing Sven a lot because he wants no part of what’s happening in about three quarters of the stories and sometimes he just gets dragged in reluctantly and I really love that. I also really love writing Bailey the Rottweiler. I personally love my Rottweiler. She’s fantastic! She’s a great dog. I can’t say enough weirdly adoring things about her. So giving the Rottweiler in the story personality was a big thing for me and anytime Bailey is doing something that displays that personality I’m usually enjoying myself immensely writing that personality into the book.
Tell us about your main characters- what makes them tick?
The main character in this book Jas Bond owns a magical antiques store. There’s all kinds of magical objects in it and it’s the business his mother owned and his grandmother before that. He was basically raised to take over the store. So he is doing what’s basically expected of him even though he himself does not possess any magical abilities like his mother and grandmother do. What makes him tick as he is just trying to live his life as best he can while being supernatural world adjacent. He doesn’t have a lot of ambition to do anything else. He’s good at his job. He has a comfortable life and that is enough for him. He just wants to maintain his current level of lifestyle and what happens over the course of the stories ends up making that increasingly difficult.
How did you come up with the title of your first novel?
The title of my first novel is Lady of the Dead it’s the first book in my Night World Series which are paranormal romances. I came up with the title because I knew I wanted a title that either showed off the main male character or the main female character. Gwen, the female lead in the book her title in the supernatural world is lady of the dead so I just decided to make that the title. Wasn’t a lot of thought behind it I’m not really good at coming up with titles, minus the Jas Bond series titles those have been a lot of fun to create.
If you had to do it all over again, would you change anything in your latest book?
You know, I don’t think I would. I am really happy with the way the Jas Bond series is going. With some of my older series there are things that I would definitely change but with Jas’ books I have loved them so much I can’t see changing anything about them. That might be different a year or two from now when I go back and look at them but as of right now, I am very happy with them they’re really fun and snarky it’s been a blast to write.
If you could spend time with a character from your book whom would it be? And what would you do during that day?
I would want to spend the day with either Bailey the Rottweiler or Sven the dwarf that fixes things up in the back of the shop. I have my own Rottweiler so spending the day with Bailey probably wouldn’t be that different than my days normally are. But I think Sven is a real character and has a lot of back story and a lot more to him, only some of which I know, and I know for a fact that he would hate spending the day with me. He is very much a loner but just listening to him talk and maybe making food would be all I would want. Nothing extravagant, we wouldn’t be going to a theme park or anything like that but I would definitely want to find the treasure trove of hidden secrets he has in that brain of his.
Are your characters based off real people or did they all come entirely from your imagination?
I’m pretty 50-50 on this in general. I have books where one or two characters will be based on certain aspects of people’s personalities so that I have something real world rooted in those characters. In my Anthony Holllownton series I give cameos to a lot of the people I know. Cameos that only they or people close to them are going to recognize as their reading it. It’ll be like they have a teaching degree and the character based on them is working at a daycare. The personalities of those cameos are not like the individual people. It’s usually just the features look like the individual character and their something similar about them they’re not straight versions of those people. Jas Bond was originally based on my husband, my husband works in retail and brings our dog with him to the shop. Our dog gets into shenanigans sometimes at work. That was all based on reality but as I was writing Jas as a character he became less and less like my husband over time. I also have books like the Night World Series or Berman’s Wolves where the characters are not based on anyone.
Do your characters seem to hijack the story or do you feel like you have the reigns of the story?
Yes! I have select characters that will hijack the story if they’re in it. Most of the time I have full control and I’ll get complaints from characters about what’s happening in the story or they’ll pout and the story won’t move forward the way it needs. But I do have a handful of characters, most of them are in my Night World paranormal romance series, that will hijack a story if they don’t like where it’s going and then I feel like I’m just writing an incident report instead of creating a story.
Have you written any other books that are not published?
Dozens, I have many stories on my laptop that are not published. Most of which are nowhere near completion or even halfway done. Before my laptop was stolen in 2013 I had about 30 or 40 on my laptop. I wasn’t able to find most of those stories in my files once I got a new computer. But since then I have created more and they are just sitting in my stories file while the ideas and plots percolate and I work on current projects. Some of them might never see the light of day and others might be published 10 years from now.
I dictate my books. I am a relatively slow typer, so when I type my books I get about 1200 to 1500 words per hour. After 2 ½ years of dictating I was able to get to 3500 words an hour. I’m now slowly heading towards the 4000 words an hour mark which is very exciting. Dictation definitely has a very large learning curve and you have to get into a different mindset to be able to do it. But now that I do I can’t imagine going back to typing the entire book. What’s interesting is that the way I write in the language I use is very different when I’m dictating versus when I’m typing. My typing languages much more flowery and less matter of fact. There’s a lot more fluff in the books when I’m typing versus dictating. What’s fun about this is that when I’m dictating I am flailing my arms all over the place which I’m told looks very comical when my husband walks by. I also can pace back and forth, lay on the floor, or twirl in my chair.
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